Bookbinding HOWTO Step 2: Folding

Not much to say here.

Once you’ve reached this step you should already have everything printed in a pile of 5-page subgroups correctly arranged for folding. You only need to be careful when selecting the pages that should go in each booklet.

I do the folding manually. Just take the pages, align them properly so that none shows over the others and fold them carefully. You’ll need the best possible alignment you can get since the final look of the book depends on it. I usually take the group and have the opposing shorter sides of the sheets make contact before applying any pressure. If you’ve ever done Origami you’ll know that otherwise you’ll end up with misaligned borders.

It has no complication at all, but you have to be extremely careful each time you fold a booklet or the sides of your book will end up being irregular. My folding is never perfect, but it gets close. Anyway the side opposing the spine of the book will inevitably have an irregular aspect since the innermost pages of a booklet will protrude over those at the outer part. Don’t worry about these triangle-like alignments. We’ll take care of them when we get to the trimming part. For now you have to make sure the lower and upper sides of your book are as aligned as possible.

Once the booklet is folded I usually press harder over the fold so that the paper gets as tight as possible. Otherwise once you start piling booklets you’ll notice they don’t keep an horizontal position and eventually slip and fall from the stack. This is also a problem once you finish the book and add the covers, because a bad folding technique results in books significantly thicker at the spines than any other side. To make tight booklets I simply apply pressure with anything at hand along the fold: a pen, a piece of plastic or whatever I can get my hands on. You simply have to be careful not to rip or damage the paper in the process.

Only a couple of tips for this otherwise uninteresting process:

1. Count: be sure to take only the required pages for each booklet following the appropriate arrangement or once you’ve folded the page disposition won’t make any sense.
2. Check, check and check: it seems stupid, but you wouldn’t be the first to have several of the pages upside down. Is it obvious that this issue bit me? More than once?
3. Did I say check? OK. Then re-check: while you go on piling the booklets, make sure again that every single one of them is in the right direction. Having one page upside down is bad, but having a whole booklet upside down can be even worse. You’ll eventually notice while you sew the booklets to each other, but then you will already have the booklet pierced and making a new set of holes definitely damages the booklet.

Update: Check out the complete bookbinding-howto series.